Debunking the way-too-early Red Sox Juan Soto rumors: There’s always a motive

If you've been following the mainstream MLB insiders — your Jeff Passans, Jon Heymans and Ken Rosenthals — then your understanding of the Juan Soto sweepstakes is probably about the same as it was a couple of weeks ago. The star outfielder held meetings with (at least) the New York Mets, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers, all of which seemed to go pretty well. The finalists started submitting initial contract offers before the Thanksgiving holiday, and now it's time to begin the bidding war in earnest, with the two New York teams the richest and most motivated parties as we barrel towards the start of Winter Meetings.

But if you've wound up on the deepest, darkest corners of the baseball internet, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Soto to Boston is already a done deal. Mike Rodriguez thinks the team has offered him a 12-year, $600 million deal, with Rafael Devers closing the deal over an hour-long phone call. Hector Gomez went even further, at 13 years and $625 million. Whether it's unnamed sources in the Dominican Republic or some random accounts on Twitter, anybody who's anybody is calling this free agency for the Red Sox.

To be clear: We're not saying that there's a zero percent chance that Soto winds up in Boston. The team's interest seems very real, and if owner John Henry really is finally willing to start spending like the old days, they can put together a very compelling pitch. The lesson we're hoping to impart today isn't aboaut where Soto will eventually sign; rather, it's about media literacy, and how to separate the signal from the noise this time of year.

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Take these Juan Soto-Red Sox rumors with a huge grain of salt

Every winter, like clockwork, the cycle begins anew. Some big free agent or another is on the market. Several teams are interested. Baseball's big news-breakers have been quiet for days, maybe even weeks, and fans have started to get antsy. So along come some outsiders, looking to capitalize on that anxiety — and maybe even launch a new career for themselves — by shooting their shot and hoping that they wind up correct.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt reports claiming anything more than that Boston has made an offer to Soto and is negotiating with his agent, Scott Boras. Any leaked information at this time of year is going to come from Boras' side of things; Boras is the one who wants as hot a market as possible, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to convince, say, Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner that they're losing a bidding war to Boston. And if Boras really wanted to get the rumor mill started, why wouldn't he simply use Passan, or Heyman, or Rosenthal, trusted names with hundreds of thousands of followers?

Maybe someone really did talk to a family friend of Soto's in the Dominican Republic. Maybe MookieBetts15 will be vindicated after all. But while it's understandable to want something, anything to read into while your team is pursuing one of the biggest free agents in the history of the sport, please remember that these accounts have every reason to get out over their skis, and very little reason to exercise caution — if they guess right, they'll be famous; if they guess wrong, they can just slink back into anonymity like nothing ever happened.